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“There are three basic projectiles that can be fired from a handgun,” Colin D Penny writes at vagazette.com, “the first being the conventional pointed bullet. When this strikes a body it will usually pass through. If it does not strike a vital organ it is rarely life threatening.” Mr. Penny sure sounds authoritative. I wonder why he neglects to mention that a “conventional pointed bullet” that severs a carotid artery can kill you in about six minutes? I’m thinking ignorance. Which is stunning considering . . .

that all the information Mr. Penny would need to verify his claim re: the survivability of a conventional (or any other) handgun round can be obtained via Google. Or, I dunno, asking someone who knows. The wider point: gun control advocates depend on willful ignorance to promote their agenda. They have to close their eyes and plug their ears. Like this:

The second [projectile] is the so called rubber bullet. These are often used for crowd control, since they can be very painful to the victim and I understand will cause a significant bruise. These are the ideal bullets for homeowner protection. (It should be added that with 20,000 gun related suicides in this country every year, this could significantly reduce those numbers.)

Where in the world did Mr. Penny get the idea that rubber bullets are ideal for home defense? Wounding – let’s call it temporarily incapacitating – a criminal in your house strikes me as a very bad idea, on a lot of levels. Not the least of which is that a rubber bullet is bound to annoy them immensely. Maybe that’s why I don’t know anyone who loads rubber bullets in their guns for home defense.

But what do I know? I’ve only taken dozens of firearms training classes run by people who’ve faced real world aggression, none of whom even mentioned rubber bullets.

As for the idea that rubber bullets would reduce suicides, it’s clear Mr. Penny has fallen down a rather deep rabbit hole. Common sense tells us that someone who wants to kill themselves wouldn’t opt for a rubber bullet. If Mr. Penny means that removing “real” bullets from a home would reduce suicides, I have one word for that: Japan. Or, more specifically, please Google “Japan suicide rate.”

The last type of projectile is the hollow-nosed bullet. This is designed to spread when it enters the body to cause significant damage. It was declared illegal by the Geneva Convention. When the shooter loads this round into his weapon he is intending to kill his victim.!

Even if our politicians are reticent to make this bullet illegal, if enough prosecutors used this as prima facia evidence of intent to kill, it would strongly deter the use of this terrible weapon.

Finally . . . no one should be able to buy hard ammunition without producing a valid gun license.

Finally, no one should tell other people to legislate away American’s natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms without knowing a thing or two about arms, ammunition, criminal behavior and other related issues. Again, if they did they’d see that their position is morally, legally and practically unsustainable. Which is why they don’t do their homework.

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73 COMMENTS

    • Obviously every law enforcement department and agency, Federal or State, in the country uses exclusively “hollow-nosed” bullets because their goal is to kill people. I wonder why the 99.5% of those departments who carry firearms exclusively for defensive purposes — you know, to defend themselves against the exact same criminal element that we could have to defend our homes and lives against — don’t load rubber bullets or “conventional pointed bullets” instead.

  1. …and it follows that a blank cartridge in a firearm would be completely harmless. Certainly placing the muzzle of a handgun to one’s head loaded with a blank cartridge and firing the handgun is safe.*

    * Mr. Penny’s understanding of guns is equal to his understanding of physics.

    • “Common sense tells us that someone who wants to kill themselves wouldn’t opt for a rubber bullet.”

      Along those same lines –

      I don’t recall ever hearing of Law Enforcement or military ever using rubber bullets smaller than .50 cal, and i do remember hearing that rubber bullets have occasionally caused fatal injuries, especially head shots. I suspect that any pistol caliber rubber bullet, which would have to be a fairly hard rubber, not like foam earplugs, would be instantly fatal in most cases if fired point blank under the chin.

      • There’s a reason it’s termed “less-lethal” as opposed to “non-lethal”; any use of force with could be lethal.

        • Any projectile discharged from a firearm, is ALWAYS lethal force.

          Firing a rubber bullet, right or wrong, is always, legally counts as lethal intent.

    • There was an actor a few years ago who put a prop gun with blanks to his temple and pulled the trigger. The blast launched shattered bone through his brain causing a fatal injury. Perhaps anus here would like to demonstrate those suicide proof rubber bullets.

  2. Wow… This guy went full retard…

    If I’m shooting somebody, it’s not because I want them to have a nasty booboo… It’s because I want them on the ground and incapable of hurting me or anybody else. That’s why I load quality hollow points into my guns.

    If you have any doubt about the benefits of ammunition selection, ask your average thug which bullet they would rather be shot with.

      • All ‘bullets’ are deadly, some are designed to be more deadly, “rubber bullets” are not designed to be more deadly, they are designed to be less-lethal.

        ‘All ammo should require a firearms license’ – even if you live in a state that’s not f-ing stupid enough to require one for a handgun. My state doesn’t require a license and allows for cash-n-carry (post NICS check) so that I can readily supply criminals (residing in the states that don’t allow firearms) with firearms, so they can hunt stupid anti-gun f’ers and stretch the pelts on the sides of their barns. I don’t supply criminals with firearms, but with sh_t like this floating around out there (some a-hole paid or mind-fuQed this dude into trying to overthrow the Constitution and come after my rights) it approaches the threshold for consideration.

        • MA requires a license to buy ammo, but it’s only show-and-go and there’s no record. There’s no NICS check either. If there was, I would buy my ammo one small box at a time and so would thousands of other 2A advocates until we broke the system.

  3. So many fails. This is only slightly better than that politician who thought that eventually “all the high-capacity magazines will go away because they will use up all the bullets” or whatever.

  4. You can’t fix stupid. You can fix ignorance. Problem with stupid folks is they’re not aware they’re stupid. Ignorant people can be made to realize they’re lacking knowledge.

    Anyway, he needs to talk to a LEO relative of mine who shot a bean bag from a 12gauge from about 6 feet away at a ~65 year old woman (she’d was spotted breaking into her boyfriend’s apartment while he was out). She was sitting on a couch with her hand under a pillow on her lap, wouldn’t bring her hand out from under the pillow.Didn’t get her to cooperate. Didn’t incapacitate her. Just convinced her to bring the hand with the revolver in it up and start waving it around…. shocked police beat a retreat instead of shooting her. She came out shooting a bit later, apparent suicide by cop.

  5. The saddest thing about Mr. Penny is that he has no idea at all how idiotic his letter is. Well, if ignorance is bliss, at least he probably sleeps well every night.

  6. He didn’t mention where that pointed bullet was going to go, after it harmlessly passed through the heart and lungs of a poor youngster just turning his life around. Possibly, for example, straight through the gun grabber standing behind him. BTW, I have never even seen a rubber bullet for sale, probably because they are so much in demand, I suppose.

    And, he makes it clear that no one should be allowed to express any opinion on any kind of firearms, unless he/she is licensed to carry concealed weapons. Or to express any opinion on medical matters unless he/she is a medical doctor. Or to express any opinion on incarceration unless he is a convicted felon, currently in prison. And violations of any of these prohibitions will get him/her that prison time.

    This, again, is the arrogance of these dopes and dopers, that they imagine they are just so superior, that in mere moments they can grasp solutions which have eluded millions of people who actually know what they are talking about, for literally years and years.

  7. Never heard of the Judge, etc. I guess. Also frangible bullets. Also wadcutters or semi-wadcutters. Or policemen loading up with HPs (unless he believes that the cops spend all their time “prima facie” looking to kill someone, which I suppose is possible for a lefty nitwit but is something of a dilemma for “only the police should have guns” antis). Just another bloomin’ ignorant, willfully or otherwise, grabber.

  8. ” It was declared illegal by the Geneva Convention.” umm… No, no it wasn’t. Article 4-3 of the 1899 Hague Convention does, but only when signatory states are fighting each other, if a signatory fights a non-signatory then it does not apply. Not that it matters in the slightest in the the United States has never been a signatory to that article anyways.

    Of course people who spew garbage never care for facts so even pointing it out is largely moot.

    • Never really understood the concept of this feel-good “Gentleman’s Agreement” about how to fight a war. And who is the enforcement authority?

      It’s okay to shoot the enemy with a .50 BMG but you can’t carry JHP’s in your Beretta? WTF?

      The idea is to kill the enemy and break their stuff until they decides to give up. If you are on the right side, morally and ethically, to defeat the enemy is the point, not the weapons you use to accomplish that.

      • “The idea is to kill the enemy…”

        Actually, it is my understanding that the thinking was something like “If you kill the enemy, you take one person off the battlefield. If you wound the enemy, you take him AND the two or three guys helping him off the battlefield… um, off the battlefield.” or something like that.

      • The people who sign such declarations often have about as much weapon knowledge as the maroon quoted above. The point isn’t to reduce killing as much as it is to reduce unnecessary suffering. They had the idea (and it may not have been as silly back then with earlier technology?) that such rounds caused more suffering for no battlefield advantage.

  9. Yeah… A rubber bullet would do just fine for suicide. Pretty much any projectile traveling at supersonic speeds can kill at contact ranges, no matter what it’s made of.

    And as our military knows, FMJ does okay with the whole killing thing. It may do it better than you want, actually, going through your target and on to whatever is behind it.

      • Wow! Is that Jerry’s reloading room? I wonder how he ever finds anything?
        Did you notice the cartridge with the red “bullet” At first, I thought he grabbed his wife’s lipstick!

    • I wouldn’t want to bet my death on a rubber bullet. I’d be afraid it might just do ALMOST enough damage.

      But somehow I don’t think it would be that hard to get a real bullet, unless of course one were to make them all illegal (as I am a law-abiding citizen). Hmm… they say “nobody is going to take your guns” but they never said anything about the bullets.

    • See Graf’s comment above, where he spells out what the Article actually does prohibit, and where he properly notes that the US never agreed to it.

    • The paper wadding from a blank round point-blank to the head will kill. Just ask the actor Jon-Erik Hexum. Except you can’t – he died from that right as he was on the cusp of superstardom back in the 80s.

  10. So when LEO’s load their service weapons with hollow point amunition it means they intend to kill people? Maybe that’s a bad example….

  11. I don’t appreciate the author using the masculine personal pronoun, and assuming that it’s just males who kill each other/themselves. It’s micro aggressions like this that are destroying this country.

    In other news, you have no idea how difficult it was to counter a progressive argument with a progressive argument. This stuff really is cyclic.

    • “It’s micro aggressions like this that are destroying this country.”

      You have *got* to be kidding.

      That very phrase, ‘micro aggression’ is an extension and a further slide downhill into the idiocy of ‘political correctness’.

      Crap like *that* is what’s destroying this country.

      Suck it up. Put your big boy (or girl) pants on.

      Deal with it. That’s what adults (are supposed to) do.

      • Someone clearly didn’t catch on to the sarcasm. Or finish reading the comment.

        But hey, jump to conclusions, just like the anti gunners do. That’s cool, I guess.

  12. hollow-nosed bullets – ‘When the shooter loads this round into his weapon he is intending to kill his victim.!”

    Um, so with this logic, it could be said that when a gun-owner loads the pointy ones they intend to kill innocent bystanders. Wait, did I just give them another idiotic talking point?

  13. Hollow points are a safety precaution. . So that the bullets don’t continue on though the intruder, through a wall, into the neighbors house, and into wherever. . The hollow points are designed to not continue though. .

  14. A rubber bullet would kill at point blank range to the temple, hell a blank will kill at point blank range to the temple. As for home defense HAHA if the bad guys knew everyone had to use them for home defense they’d just start wearing thick coats. Lol

  15. I don’t want to burst his bubble, but when you fire a gun at somebody with live ammo, it’s pretty much taken as a given you have lethal intent, hollow points or not.

  16. Well duh! Not to drift away from the theme but why oh why do so many recommend birdshot for home defense? I can replace my walls. And the video jogged my recent memory of Mythbusters confirming that regular drywall and gypsum stopped 00buckshot. But not a slug. BTW my brother shot me in the FACE with a 22blank when I was a kid. I coulda’ been blinded but went unscathed. LUCKILY. No we never told my dad. Don’t tell me blanks,beanbag rounds and rubber bullets can’t kill you…

  17. “Finally . . . no one should be able to buy hard ammunition without producing a valid gun license.”

    He throws this in at the end of his misguided meander through ballistics. It’s facile, unplanned, like an afterthought.

    It’s like the Ayatollah giving an hour long denunciation of the West, dropping the mic and walking off stage, only to rush right back out, pick it up and shout “Oh yeah, death to America!”

  18. “I only draw my sidearm when I intend to shoot to kill. That’s its purpose, to kill. So that’s how I use it.” -Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens.

  19. Lol this article is so full of nonsense it’s hard to even know where to begin. Does anyone have any spitzer 9mm rounds to sell me? I never see them at the store.

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